Love your enemies and do good to them, lend and expect nothing back. You will then have a great reward, and you will be sons of the Most High God. For He is good to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful just as your Father is merciful.
Then he stopped and stood quietly and looked out at the congregation. The sanctuary was hot. The windows were open but it was a hot day and hot inside. Women fanned at their faces with the church bulletin. A car drove by in the street. There was birdsong from a nearby tree. He turned and set the Bible on the pulpit. Then he began to talk.
This passage, he said, is usually referred to as the Sermon on the Mount. Augustine first called it that. It appears in the Gospels of both Matthew and Luke but the texts differ somewhat. Matthew’s is over a hundred verses long. Luke’s is only some thirty verses. Matthew says Jesus sat and spoke to the multitudes and his disciples from a hill, a mount. The writer of the Gospel of Luke tells us that Jesus stood on a level place and spoke there. Both Gospels begin with the Beatitudes. The Blesseds. In Matthew there are nine and in Luke four. But the most important of these Bible texts say essentially the same thing. These are the ones I’ve read just now. The crux of the matter for us. The soul of our lesson and the very essence of the teaching of Jesus.
Love your enemies. Pray for those who harm you. Turn the other cheek. Give away money and don’t expect it back.
But what is Jesus Christ talking about? He can’t mean this literally. That would be impossible. He must have been speaking of some utopian idea, a fantasy. He must be using a metaphor. Suggesting a sweet dream. Because all of us here today know better. We’re awake to reality and know the world wouldn’t permit such a thing. It never has and never will. We can be clear about that right now.
Because here we are at war again. And we know the inescapable images of war and violence so well. We’ve seen them all too often.
The naked young girl running in terror toward us, crying and screaming, away from fires behind her.
The boy in the hospital room with his little brother and their frightened mother. He’s been blinded, his face is scarred. Am I ugly now, Mother? he says.
We see the pictures of the headless body dumped out beside the road in a ditch.
We’ve seen the soldier, the black stiff grotesque thing that once was a man, burned now and hanged, dragged through the streets behind a truck.
We’ve watched in horror the human figures leaping out of the windows of the burning towers.
And so we know the satisfaction of hate. We know the sweet joy of revenge. How it feels good to get even. Oh, that was a nice idea Jesus had. That was a pretty notion, but you can’t love people who do evil. It’s neither sensible nor practical. It’s not wise to the world to love people who do such terrible wrong. There is no way on earth we can love our enemies. They’ll only do wickedness and hatefulness again. And worse, they’ll think they can get away with this wickedness and evil, because they’ll think we’re weak and afraid. What would the world come to?
But I want to say to you here on this hot July morning in Holt, what if Jesus wasn’t kidding? What if he wasn’t talking about some never-never land? What if he really did mean what he said two thousand years ago? What if he was thoroughly wise to the world and knew firsthand cruelty and wickedness and evil and hate? Knew it all so well from firsthand personal experience? And what if in spite of all that he knew, he still said love your enemies? Turn your cheek. Pray for those who misuse you. What if he meant every word of what he said? What then would the world come to?